


Burnt

by Jordiscy, Potionsmstrs



Category: Scarab Beetle Series - C. L. Stone, Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Crossover, Gen, The Academy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3802816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jordiscy/pseuds/Jordiscy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potionsmstrs/pseuds/Potionsmstrs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of House of Korba, fires are still erupting all over Charleston, and Team Toma has been tasked to investigate their cause.</p>
<p>Sam and Dean Winchester arrive in Charleston to investigate the same fires after a news article quoted an old lady witness: "Either spontaneous combustion or there was a ghost!" </p>
<p>"Hey Dean."</p>
<p>"Yeah, Sammy?"</p>
<p>"Looks like we have a couple of cousins in town too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opening

                                                                                            

Was this the beginnings of my mid-life crisis? Geoffrey Bauer thought to himself as he tied the white garbage bag together. Lifting it out of the tall kitchen trash can, the bag split at the bottom seam the moment it swung over the tiled floor. Banana peels, empty boxes of hot pockets, and last night’s leftover enchilada casserole spilled all over the kitchen in a stinky mess. Great.

Geoffrey swept it all back up and doubled bagged it the second time, daring the cheap brand of plastic to split on him again. As he mopped enchilada sauce up with paper towels while on his hands and knees, he shouted toward the stairs leading up to the second story of the house. “Jason! Did you take care of those gas cans?”

The sixteen year old had mown the lawn just yesterday, and his bad habit was to always leave the fuel out of place instead of putting them back into the shed with the mower. If Geoffrey did not hound his son to tidy up, the cans would forever sit unsightly by the trash cans. More often than not, Geoffrey gave up and put them back himself until the next week, when Jason would mow the lawn again and set the same damned cans in the same damned spot outside the shed.

“Yeah, Dad!” Jason’s voice echoed down.

“You sure?” Geoffrey shouted back up.

“Yeah, Dad!” Jason replied in the same exact tone.

“Do you even know what I’m asking you?” Geoffrey yelled once more while tucking the dirty paper towels into the small opening at the top of the already tied off trash bags.

“Yeah, Dad!”

“Can I trade in your Camaro for a cheaper used car?”

“Yeah, Dad!”

Definitely my mid-life crisis.

With the bag in one hand, he pushed open the screen door out to the back yard and cursed when he realized he managed to get enchilada sauce on his favorite blue button up shirt. Would that even wash out?

As he traversed the grass to the 30-gallon heavy duty trash cans tucked up against the shed at the back corner of his property, he started running figures in his head. If he could get away with selling his son’s car and replacing it with something that did not have a car note attached, he would only have to reduce his wife’s salon and spa visits by half per month to afford that hair plug procedure he had brochures on and safely tucked away in his desk at the office. Once his hairline managed to reach his forehead again, he could finally look into setting up those no-strings-attached dating profiles online. Should he have felt guilty he was planning on how to finance affairs outside his marriage? Yeah, he should, but his wife had been sleeping with the pool boy for three years already. The sad part was they didn’t have a pool. She had to borrow the next door neighbor’s pool boy while Geoffrey was at work. Thus, there were no guilty feelings when he started thinking about what saucy descriptors he could use for himself to entice lovely ladies into a good time.

The gas cans were sitting right next to the garbage cans.

Geoffrey huffed as he lifted the lid of the garbage can and dropped the bags inside. The kid was certainly going to get a used car lot trade in no matter how much the skinny, spoiled snot argued, fussed, and complained on Facebook to his friends. The father kicked the red metals cans with a grunt of frustration, making the gasoline slosh around and spill out of the openings some. He felt marginally better after the little outburst.

Lifting his wrist close to his face, he checked the time on his illuminating watch. The face read 8:47pm, and just like clockwork, a little bell started tinkling from the other end of the property toward the street. Turning toward the front yard, he glared at the hunched over, little old woman holding the leash to a white Scottish terrier in a tartan sweater. The pooch had its rear leg cocked up at the light pole on Geoffrey’s property.

“Eunice. Will you please get your dog to pee someplace else every night? There is a permanent circle of barren land right there, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get grass to grow there again. What does your dog eat to piss out liquid napalm like that?” He had asked her at least a hundred times to pick a different nightly walking route to no avail.

Eunice smiled apologetically at the middle aged man, but his eyebrows furrowed as her face morphed to one of confusion, then transitioned to pure and unadulterated fear. The terrier lowered his leg and started yapping furiously at Geoffrey, the little bell around his collar tinkling madly. That was new behavior, for the mongrel usually paid the man no mind and continued on with its own business after relieving its initial business in the yard.

With a crooked and knobby finger, Eunice pointed at him. No, not at him, behind him. Geoffrey whirled around to see what else could possibly be invading his yard. His eyes registered a firefly, only it was glowing and flickering brighter than any bug he ever witnessed before. Wasn’t it a bit cold and out of season in mid-November for fireflies? And why wasn’t it blinking its glow like they usually did?

No, it wasn’t a firefly. It was more like the flame of a match floating…

…straight toward the shed and the gas cans.

“No!” Geoffrey lunged toward the little light to try and prevent it from nearing the fumes he knew he just jostled into the air, not caring that the flame appeared to not be carried by anyone or anything.

The explosion shook Mr. Bauer’s house and broke the windows. Eunice and her dog were blown back to sprawl into the street.

Jason found his dad a couple minutes later on the singed grass with not enough of his bald head left to put any hair plugs into.


	2. Butt-ket

“I think I found something.” Sam was taking a break from scanning Men of Letters files and was browsing online news articles. Not that it counted as a break to Dean, who was playing with a sword off the wall of the bunker library again.

“What’d you find?” Dean lunged forward with the scimitar like he was fencing his shadow, not caring the curved blade was not a rapier. “Midget wrestling videos?”

Sam rolled his eyes, not bothering to reply to his brother’s comment. “A possible case in Charleston, South Carolina.”

“Haven’t been there since you were, what? Twelve?” The sword sliced through the air and was followed up with a sloppy passé.

“So get this. There was a string of church fires for a few weeks, each starting behind the altar with a slow burning accelerant so he could get away. They caught the guy in the act three weeks ago.” Sam ran a hand through his mane of hair.

Dean snorted as he lowered the blade and planted his hands on his hips as he turned toward his younger brother. “Then how is it a case if they caught the dude?”

Sam scowled before continuing. “The article says there’s a copycat arsonist, but it doesn’t match up. There’s been two fires a week ever since, but they’re random places. People’s sheds, back porches, even one inside a fire station. Some were small incidents. Some gutted buildings. The signature is all over the place.”

Dean turned back to his original position to continue lunging with the sword not designed for lunges and piercing. “Again, not a case.”

“Would you let me finish?” Tones of frustration and annoyances laced Sam’s words. “There was a witness to a shed fire, an old lady who is being slightly ridiculed. She says, ‘It was spontaneous combustion, or it was a ghost.’ And,” Sam clicked over to another tab on the internet browser, “all these new fires always start at the same time at night. Eleven minutes to nine. Something isn’t right. I think it’s our type of thing.” He crossed his arms and sat back in the armed chair at the library table, silently communicating with Dean to show how serious he was.

Dean sighed, resigning. He put the sword back on the wall rack, giving Sam his full attention. “Well, it’s not like we have anything better to do. Cas is still looking for his grace, and Crowley’s been quiet, other than to hang out.” Even Sam couldn’t ignore the personality change in the King of Hell. “Alright. Let’s pack up and head out.”

A few more keystrokes were heard before Sam piped up again. “Hey Dean,” he called out before Dean could disappear past the threshold of the room.

“Yeah, Sammy?”

“Looks like we have a couple of cousins in town too.”

 

-The Next Day-

 

The Impala rumbled along the residential roads of North Charleston. It had clocked roughly twenty more hours of drive time and 1,400 miles under its tires through six different states since they departed the bunker in Kansas. Even though the black four door car wasn’t a sentient character in the adventures of the Winchester Bros., it did appreciate the fact that Dean bothered to change the oil and rotate the tires before the lengthy drive.

Dean was behind the wheel again as he navigated the streets from their motel room. Out of his peripheral vision, he noticed his younger brother completely focused on a cell phone. Always slave to his curiosity, which he admitted has probably gotten him killed like a cat on a couple of occasions, he leaned over to sneak a peek at the screen. What could possibly be that interesting to have Sam so engrossed in a tiny screen?

He leaned too far and took the wheel with him. The car lurched toward the curb, nearly sending Sam’s head into the window. Dean quickly straightened both himself and the car back into the lane before checking all the mirrors to make sure a cop did not suddenly poof into existence to witness the little debacle.

“Dude! What the hell?!” Sam hissed.

“You have been on that thing for most of the drive here, and again now that we’ve checked into the motel. It obviously wasn’t Busty Asian Beauties…”

“That’s you, Dean,” Sam interrupted with the scowl Dean was all too familiar seeing on his brother’s face.

His curiosity could not be abated. If trying to peep didn’t work, he had to resort to asking outright. “What are you doing over there? What could be that friggin’ interesting?”

Sam rolled his hazel eyes from out the passenger side window up to the ceiling of the car and stopped to stare at Dean. “Angry birds.” The tone was deadpan and empty, yet so full of sarcasm.

Dean could see right through the obvious lie but knew that his opportunity to discover the secret had passed when Sam turned the phone to sleep mode and tucked it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t tell me, Little Miss Sunshine.”

A deep breath cycled through Sam’s lungs. He was actually looking up through various public records available online on what he believed to be their extended family residing in the area. From what he could research, a branch of the Winchester bloodline moved to Charleston decades ago. The most recent generation would be their second cousins, a girl and boy named Kayli and Wil Winchester. Their father, Jack, was drawing welfare checks from the state.

They argued somewhere in Kentucky about whether they should reach out to these distant relatives or not. Sam wanted to find them and make contact because family was important, right? Plus, the Men of Letters line ran through Winchester blood, and he wanted to know if the legacy carried on in that branch. Comparing notes sounded like a good time to the scholar. Dean, however, adamantly refused the idea. Through all the words that stumbled out of him, the end message Sam received was that Dean was still insecure about himself. Dean feared that he brought bad luck to those he got close to, no matter his good intentions to protect them from harm. He was also afraid of anymore betrayal from family. He had more than enough backstabbing from his own blood throughout his life, and he thought he was protecting himself if he simply didn’t open up to the notion of family anymore.

Of course, Sam couldn’t let these thoughts be known. That would just incite another argument. “I’m just tired of being in the car, Dean.” They had agreed that the case of the fires took priority, so their attention was to be on that and not chasing down people who weren’t involved in their lives.

The little computer display in Dean’s imagination flashed an error message in his mind’s eye: “Does Not Compute.” How could anyone ever tire of the smooth ride within the comfortable leather and steel frame of his Baby? The car was practically their home; how dare Sam complain!

Remembering that his brother was a very different person than himself, Dean shook his head back and forth briefly to refocus his thoughts onto the road and stop signs around them. “When we get some answers and hopefully security tapes, we’ll go back to the motel so you can take a nap.” He knew Sam’s thoughts were on other things, but he placated and played along with the excuse anyways. That’s what kept the peace when they were cooped up for long periods of time.

Sam nodded silently and gazed out the window.

Dean’s thoughts had already moved onto new material to keep the boredom of the impending quiet at bay. His lips curled up in a smile. “Can you believe the room number? 221B!”

“So?”

Dean gasped dramatically. “So? So Sherlock!”

Sam shook his head and went back to staring out the window.

“To borrow from Mrs. Hudson,” Dean said before switching to the most feminine falsetto his deep bass voice could with a forced British accent, “A nice murder. That’ll cheer you up.”

Dean parked the Impala along the curb directly in front of the office half of the fire department building a few minutes later. By the time the brothers dressed in simple suits slipped out of the classic car, a middle aged gentleman in black Dickie’s and a grey collared polo shirt walked out of the open bay doors. He had his hand held out to shake when Sam and Dean approached. His hair was salt and peppered, and the embroidered logo on his shirt identified him as the chief of this particular station. His hand shake was firm and confident.

“Frank Singleton,” he introduced himself, “but I’m sure you two already know that, don’t you?”

Sam barely flinched, only enough for just Dean to notice. He had not quite been prepared to be expected and was caught off guard. Bad Sam!

“Of course we do!” Dean smoothly covered while smiling professionally. This brought Sam back to his wits so the two could pull out their falsified ID wallets and flash them to Chief Singleton’s face in unison. They had done this so many times together, it looked rehearsed and ready for a crime drama television series, not like either of them wanted to re-live that fantasy (but if anyone asked Sam, the Japanese game show was still the worst). “I’m Petty, and this is my partner, Mr. Hart.”

“So what has the council sent you two for this time? More negotiations that are really denials to my station’s needs?” The chief crooked his fingers beside his head like quotation marks at ‘negotiations.’

A pair of men passed by behind the chief, having just left the station to head down the street. Dean assumed they were a gay couple visiting for one of those free infant car seat consultations for a baby they paid a random lady to birth for them. The hunter disregarded the men as a non-threat and dismissed them from further attention.

“No,” Sam replied. “We’re from All Nation Mutual. We’re here to conduct our own insurance investigation to your…” Sam’s professional persona cracked slightly, “Uh… your fire incident.”

Dean had to pivot away and hide his grin into his fist at the irony.

The chief’s head tilted to the side as his brows knit together. “I already submitted the report, and nothing can trump a report about a fire incident,” more quotey fingers, “than the fire chief, other than the Fire Marshall himself, and he signed the damned thing right next to my own name.” Apparently, his authority being questioned was a sore topic. “Why do you need to investigate too?”

Sam gave forth his most sympathetic smile. “Our insurance company prefers to hold independent investigations for our own records and prevent any possible fraud.” The chief’s eyes tried to bug out of their sockets. “Not that we’re accusing you for fraud!” Sam quickly tacked on.

Frank rubbed his greying eyebrows with his fingers in exasperation. “What the hell. The city council is doing everything it can to tell me it isn’t my station with all the red tape it takes to get anything done that needs doing.” He eyed the two men back and forth from each other. “I could tell that a couple of suits driving up was going to give me a headache. No offense to you guys personally.”

Sam smiled awkwardly. “None taken.” The strain of bridging the gap between local politics and real world public services was taking an obvious toll on Frank. Sam had a brief twinge of guilt for aggravating the guy’s stresses even further than what they already were, but he quickly steeled himself to precede with the plan. One more grey hair on the fire chief’s head was a small price to pay if the Winchester Bros. could stop whatever was trying to burn Charleston down. According to the preliminary research, lives have already been lost. If this case did wind up being supernatural, then more lives probably hung in the balance. They couldn’t let the little things get in the way of their mission.

“So what do you need from me?” Chief Singleton asked while heading back inside the bay doors to where two large fire engines and an ambulance were parked.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Dean suggested, eager to get to the meat and potatoes of this visit. “Show us where all the excitement happened.”

 

-Two Minutes Later-

 

Well. This is anticlimactic, Dean thought loudly to himself as three grown men stood on a concrete patio behind the station and looked down at a galvanized steel bucket. The pail was empty except for the black scorch coating on the inside surface that spilled over the lip. Jagged holes and pockmarks were at the middle mark. “This is your fire incident?” Dean tried out the quotey fingers for himself, then immediately vowed to never do it again.

Chief Singleton raised an eyebrow at the question. “You did read my report, right?”

Whoops. Busted.

“Our managers make it a point not to let us go in with any bias beforehand,” Sam interjected for the quick save as he pretended to scribble notes into a little notebook. “So we gather the facts from the ground up and come to our own conclusions.”

The Chief rolled his eyes before resigning himself. “The fire was contained to this butt-ket. The contents were beach sand and extinguished cigarette butts. Spontaneous combustion. Nelson smelled it and properly utilized a fire extinguisher. He estimated five minutes of burn time.”

“What time did Nelson discover the fire?” Sam asked as his pen scratched away at the paper in his palm.

“2054 hours.”

Sam and Dean made eye contact with each other, knowing they both did the math as to when the fire had started. 8:49 pm. The same time the other fires were reported to have started. Sam noted it and drew a little star next to the numbers.

“How did a fire manage to start there?” Dean continued the questioning.

Chief Singleton shrugged. “Heck if I know. We’ve been trying to figure that out ourselves. The station smokers had not been on duty for the past twelve hours beforehand, so it wasn’t a smoldering butt. There are no electrical cables anywhere near the area, and no reports of lightning. There wasn’t even any wind to blow any embers from illegal open fires from the neighbors, to which there were none that night, because I’d like to believe the residents on this block have some brains not to do that with us around the corner.”

Dean rubbed the stubble growing around his jaw as he turned 360-degrees to survey the surrounding area for other clues. Power lines were nearby, so the use of their EMF gadgets would have been useless this time around. There wasn’t much to this back-yard of sorts, just a couple dozen of feet of grass before a nine-foot tall treated wood privacy fence. The other side was a single story ranch style house. The concrete square they were on only had the self-igniting bucket and a simple charcoal grill occupying it.

“Did anyone notice anything weird that evening?” Sam asked.

“Like what?”

Sam pursed his lips and looked skyward to make it look like he had to wrack his brain for suggestions, when in truth he knew exactly the details he wanted to know. “Maybe things like odd smells? Flickering lights? Temperature fluxuations?”

“Our AC has been acting up for the past six months. It refuses to cooperate, so my guys have been complaining about sweltering heat during the summer and frigid cold so far this fall. So yeah, we’ve had fluctuating temperatures, including that night and up to today.” Frank snorted. “The work order for that had the HVAC guy come out, knock it twice with a hammer, announce everything is fixed and leave within an hour. The next day, the damned thing is acting up again.”

Sam noted that cold spots were inconclusive.

“And I submitted a work order for electrical work since then too,” Chief continued. “The lights started blinking that night real bad, and they still do intermittently. The wiring here was done in the 70s and needs to be redone up to code. It shouldn’t have anything to do with this,” he nodded at the pathetic-looking bucket. “As I said, this wasn’t an electrical fire. I don’t see how HVAC has to do with it either.”

“What did that have to show?” Dean asked while pointed to the corner of the building. His surveying got him to notice an old model security camera pointed straight at the patio they were on. Once the other two men looked up at the lens, Dean coyly smiled and waved to it.

Chief Singleton snorted and crossed his arms. “Those electrical problems fried the security camera system. All we have is corrupt feed and more work orders to submit to the city’s red tape department. They’re useless right now.”

Yet more inconclusive data. There wasn’t any substantial information to determine whether some neighborhood kid hopped the fence and dropped a match into the bucket for a prank, or if there were supernatural forces at work. The only red flag thus far was the timing compared to the other fires, but that wasn’t enough to even begin to figure out what was causing the outbreaks. If only that security camera had been functioning properly, it would have answered a lot of questions.

“If you’re quick,” the Chief said as he started to go inside the building as Sam took out a camera and started taking pictures of the bucket and the surrounding area, both to keep up the insurance charade and to hopefully glean more clues he and his brother might have overlooked, “you might be able to catch up to the digital data analysts that were just here. They took the feed to have their computer guru look over it and see if he can pull anything useful out of it.”

Dean blinked. “Really?”

The Chief nodded. “They left right as you two showed up.”

Sam rushed to finish taking his pictures before joining his brother to speed walk through the fire station. “We’ll call you if we have any more questions!” he hurriedly added over his shoulder.

“Put in a word with the council when you submit your report, will ya?” The Chief shouted at their retreating backs. “Let those stingy bastards know what poor conditions they’re leaving me with if they expect us to keep North Charleston from burning down!”

Even though they had no intentions to contact the local government at all, Dean was halfway considering drafting up a letter under the guise of a concerned citizen. Maybe he could tempt Sam with one of those salad shaky cup things to get him to write an editorial to the newspaper.

The brothers were three paces from reaching the Impala when a new voice reached out to them.

“Petty and Hart?” They were called out with a skepticism that challenged them.

They turned to see the pair of men dressed casually in jeans approaching them from further down the sidewalk. They looked to be college age. “Yeah. That’s us,” Dean replied while indicating Sam and himself. Dean recognized them to be the gay couple that walked by shortly after they arrived at the station. Maybe he shouldn’t have disregarded them so quickly at the beginning.

The one with a silver-encased sand dollar around his neck raised an eyebrow, making it obvious he did not believe that simple claim. The other one with the surfer blonde hair and just about as tall as Sam scoffed. “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, right?”

Dean flashed his brightest and most disarming smile as he adjusted the knot to his suit tie. “I can’t help it if my partner and I are just that awesome.”

Trying to keep up the façade and plow through the obvious doubts these new strangers held, Sam picked up and diverted the conversation. “Are you two the digital data guys with that freak fire footage?”

“Yeah,” the shorter of the two answered. He had one blue eye and one green. “What of it?”

“Mind if we take a peek at it?” Sam asked as politely and professionally as he could as slivers of nervousness settled under his skin.

The one with the dual colored eyes crossed his arms over his chest and stepped closer to the suit-wearing brothers. “I wouldn’t have a problem with sharing if you two were actually insurance investigators and using your real names.”

Knowing their gig was up, Sam held his hands up by the sides of his head in the universal sign of surrender. “Okay, okay. We’re not really from the insurance company.”

“Can we still see the footage?” Dean asked with feigned innocence. “Pretty please?” The older Winchester noted that while the brown haired dude with the shell around his neck focused on him and his brother, the tall and skinny one kept an active eye on their surroundings as if he were keeping lookout. It was a two-man tactic Sam and Dean frequently used when working their own investigations. In matter of fact, while Sam was exchanging words, Dean was making his own observational sweeps and concluded these two guys stayed and waited for them to come out of the fire station from the black SUV parked further down and across the road.

“Why are you interested in it?” Sand Dollar asked.

“We want to figure out who is setting these fires and get them to stop before anyone else gets hurt,” Sam answered. In the end, that was the simple truth of it all.

Sand Dollar’s dual-toned eyes softened and held out his hand. “Marc.”

Sam took the offered hand and shook it. “Sam.” The process repeated with Dean.

Marc pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward Blondie, who stood a step behind and to the side. “That’s Brandon.”

Brandon leaned forward to whisper harshly into Marc’s ear, not caring it was loud enough for the other two men to overhear. “Are we really going to trust impersonators?” Dean didn’t bother to look offended.

Marc turned and placed his hand on Brandon’s shoulder reassuringly, as if they were brothers too. “He’s not lying about wanting to wrap up these fires. We could use a fresh point of view.”

“But they’re lying.”

“They’re doing their way of gathering intel. It’s not like our own methods are run-of-the-mill. None of this material is classified anyways.”

Sam and Dean exchanged glances, finding it odd they were being openly discussed right in front of their faces. Their attention was piqued about this duo upon their confession of using non-traditional methods themselves. Marc and Brandon were involved in something not-quite-normal, but then again, when have Sam and Dean ever come across normality in their lives?

Brandon sighed in reluctance. “I hope this won’t cost us anything.” He turned to the pair of suits, knowing full well they heard every word exchanged. “We’re headed back to our place to take a look at this.” He held up a flash drive before shoving it deep into the front pocket of his jeans. “We need to stop and pick up some dinner for everyone on the way,” he said to Marc.

Marc looked at Sam and Dean. “Want to follow us?”

 


	3. Cawn Dugs N' Tayter Tats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kayli is hungry and the Winchester brothers meet Team Toma.

“But I’ve never been to Disney World before,” Kayli whined, her voice echoing slightly in the limited room of the ascending elevator car. “Isn’t that a crime against childhood? We need to fix it.”

“I have never been to this Disney World either,” Raven interjected with his Russian accent.

“See! We should have gone with Kevin. He and his girlfriend need chaperones. There is no way we can trust those two love birds to their own devices on a vacation like this.” Kayli tugged on Corey’s arm, knowing it wouldn’t take much effort to recruit the insanely tall nerdling to her cause.

Corey patted one of her hands that was gripping his forearm. “Her entire family went with them. They’ll have plenty of adult supervision over the next week.”

“You’re so not helping, Corey.” Kayli glared up at him as the elevator stopped at their floor and opened.

“We have work to do,” Raven said as he led the way to his apartment door.

The three had finished a full day’s work at a construction site, building a family home in the suburbs. They tiled the kitchen and both bathrooms. “Disney World has to be more important than grout,” Kayli muttered.

“Tell that to the family moving into that house,” Raven retorted as he stuck his key into the door.

The moment the door swung opened, Kayli tried to shove her way past the Russian to get inside first. Her little body knew there was food inside even if her brain was still fixated on amusement parks. “We don’t even need to go for the entire week like they are. Just give me two or three days, and what little childhood I have left will be fulfilled,” she continued to argue as Raven shoved her back. They both raced to the kitchen, pushing and trying to trip each other up to prevent the other from reaching the paper bags of corn dogs and tater tots on the counter.

A throat clearing got Kayli to freeze completely because she could hear it came from Marc. His tone, even with as something as pretending to clear phlegm, carried authority that compelled her to obey like a brainwashed soldier. The petite brunette had a corndog hanging out of her mouth, another one firmly in her right hand’s grasp by the stick, and two fingers of her left hand one knuckle deep up Raven’s nostrils, tipping his head back.

“You might want to wash your hands before you eat, Bambi,” Marc suggested once he knew he had the full attention of the three who just came in.

She noticed there were guests in the living room, sitting on the couch, and she had thoroughly embarrassed them all in front of the strangers. “Oh…” she said around the deep fried batter on a stick. Carefully extracting her digits from Raven’s face, she grabbed a napkin and removed the corndog from her mouth, but not before biting off the tip to continue chewing.

Axel and Marc stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the television. Brandon sat on the floor under the windows, one of his arms propped up on his raised knee. Their arrangement left room for the two older men on the couch. Even as they were seated, Kayli could tell these men were massive. They had to compete with Axel and the twins in terms of height based on how their knees nearly came up to their chins on the sofa. She could also tell they’d rather be standing by what their posture had to say; they wanted to keep as many opportunities to bolt as they could, which was a feeling she was acquainted with.

“May I introduce Sam and Dean,” Axel spoke while indicating the appropriate individuals with a nod of his head. They both wore soft cotton tee-shirts under flannel button up shirts, all the buttons undone. Over all of that were light jackets adorned with numerous pockets, designed for utility. With comfortable jeans and boots, they were dressed to easily layer up against the cold. Kayli also noticed their choice in clothing would be something she herself would probably wear if she were a six-foot plus male mammoth and still in the pick pocketing industry; the ensemble was meant to blend in easily with a crowd and not restrict movement when running from a scene. Despite this, they were both strikingly handsome and could easily pass off as brothers, even with the drastic difference in hair lengths.

“And the rest of my team,” Axel continued, “Corey…”

Dean switched his gaze back and forth between Corey, who was still standing by the door, and Brandon. “Identical twins?” he interrupted. “How do you tell them apart?” he asked to the room in general.

“Corey smiles more,” Marc quickly answered to Axel could continue. Brandon scowled a little while Corey lit up with a lopsided grin.

“…Raven,” Axel continued, “and last but not least, Kayli.”

Both Sam and Dean flinched, making Kayli flinch at their reaction to her name.

“I thought you said her name was Bambi,” Dean said challengingly to Marc.

Marc shrugged. “It’s her nickname.”

Sam cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow at the girl. “Kayli… what?” he implored.

Kayli’s first reaction was to lie. There was no reason for these guys to know who she was, and it was a habit still ingrained from her criminal days. However, she promised her Academy guys that she was turning a new leaf, and lying about something obvious with them in the room was not going to keep her in their good graces. Thus, she stuck with the truth after a moment’s hesitation. “Winchester. Kayli Winchester.”

Dean exploded and whipped around to face Sam. “We agreed!” he barked. “Dammit, Sammy! You said we wouldn’t spare the time or resources to track them down, that these fires take priority!”

By the time he finished that sentence, every male on Axel’s team was standing and tensed, ready to spring into action. Raven moved to stand protectively in front of Kayli while Corey actively blocked the front door to prevent any escape. The implication that they were stalking Kayli had them bristling like territorial dogs.

“I didn’t do this! I swear!” Sam instantly defended himself, confusing everyone else in the room. Kayli’s legs were braced and ready to bolt nonetheless, a list of possible places for her to seek refuge already forming in her mind.

Dean shot up to standing and pointed a finger right into Sam’s face, only a couple inches away from poking his nose. “Don’t pull that puppy eyed look on me. I told you-“

Sam raised his hands to indicate compliance and non-aggression. “Will you listen to me? I looked them up, tried to get some more information, but I swear I didn’t set this up. I didn’t know about these guys before you did, let alone that she knows them.”

Dean narrowed his eyes and focused intently on Sam’s face, studying every feature in his expression for the slightest indication he was lying. Sam’s face held true; there was no twitching, break in eye contact, beads of sweat, or extra pronounced pulse throbs. Frustrated that Sam was indeed telling the truth, Dean threw this hands into the air only to immediately bring them back down and slam his palms onto his jean-clad thighs, rubbing them in what Sam came to recognize as the tic his older brother resorted to when he was angry.

The other guys stood still and observed closely, seeing if the pair would reveal any other clues to their interest in Kayli, never straying from their ready-to-attack positions. Kayli was too busy focusing on the strangers’ use of the plural pronoun when referring to her. They knew about her brother. They knew about Wil, and they wanted him as much as they wanted her. Why? Were they hired by Jack, her father, to track them down and yank them back to be his meal ticket to the bar once again? Could he even afford private investigators like that for his own selfish endeavors? Her older sister instincts surfaced with a burning drive to protect Wil at any cost, even if it meant sacrificing herself, but she hoped it wouldn’t have to go that far nonetheless.

Dean started pacing around the living room while running his hands through his light brown hair in exasperation. No one else dared move as he stepped around the furniture and over whatever was in his path, never bumping into anything while never actively looking at what was around him, like his instincts had already subconsciously observed and mapped everything and everyone in the room so he could concentrate on the rant he started to babble out to himself just under his breath. “How the hell does this shit keep happening? Speaking of hell, this is probably all a joke from Crowley. Start a few fires to get our attention knowing we’d sniff the trail straight to… whatever this is.” He planted his feet firmly into the carpet and bent at the knees so he could roar straight up to the ceiling. “I hope you’re laughing good and hard at me, you bastard!”

Everyone one flinched and took a step back.

After the outburst, Dean plopped back down into his seat on the couch beside Sam, splayed out in defeat. He looked exhausted, but not like he had just run a marathon, but in the way one would after years of turmoil, worry, and depression, like life had been sucked out of him to leave an empty husk. “Staying dead would have made life a whole lot easier for me,” he said under his breath.

“Mind sharing what all this is about?” Marc asked with eyes narrowed into a death glare toward the men on the couch.

Sam looked up from rubbing his eyebrows, meeting Marc’s glare with his own look of desperation, almost pleading or begging to be understood. “My brother and I?” He pointed to Dean and back to himself. “We’re Sam and Dean Winchester.” Sam looked over and met Kayli’s eyes, who had gone deer-in-headlights. “We’re your second cousins.”

All sets of eyes, with the exception of Raven, homed in on Kayli’s small frame. She futilely hid behind her partially eaten corndog. Raven kept his glare on the Winchester brothers like a faithful watchdog, making sure they did not make the slightest wrong move.

“Stop looking at me,” Kayli scowled before taking another aggressive bite off the end of her corndog. Her teeth made indentations of the wooden stick running through the center of the hotdog.

“So?” Marc asked her.

“So, what?”

“So, are they your cousins?”

Kayli hated the blush that invaded her cheeks. What she was about to admit out loud would sound like a shortcoming, and it was embarrassing to put it out into the open. “I… I don’t know,” she said truthfully while looking down to let her straight, brown hair to veil her face. “Jack never really talked about his, well, our extended family.”

Corey stepped forward a little from the door. “I can look up your family history later tonight,” he offered. Marc nodded his approval.

“Here,” Sam said while fishing out one of the paper napkins out of a pocket in his jacket along with a pen. He leaned forward on the couch so he could use the coffee table as a solid writing surface. With legible handwriting, he wrote four names at the bottom. Still slave to their own curiosities, everyone inched forward until they could see what was being written. The men moved aside so Kayli could squeeze her way through and get the best view.

When Sam was finished with columns of names, he turned it around so Kayli could read it right side up. “We share a great grandfather, Hugh Winchester. He had two sons.” As he explained, Sam pointed the tip of the pen at the names. “Henry and James Winchester. James should be your grandfather.”

“Grampa Jimmy? Yeah, we knew him.” She paused and lost herself in thought for a moment. Everyone else waited patiently for her. “I can recall bouncing on his knee when I was really little. Mom mentioned a Henry, and Grampa Jimmy started ranting about some ‘no good deadbeat weirdo brother’ of his. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that’s your own grandfather.” It was always the random things that seemed to stick in one’s memories from early childhood.

Sam nodded and smiled. For once, something was finally going his way on this trip. Dean, wallowing in dismay, was still slumped back on the couch, pretending like he wasn’t paying attention.

Axel tilted his head to get a better read on the napkin before nodding to the Winchester brothers. “We can work with this for now. I’m still going to have Corey confirm this overnight. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” Sam agreed while pocketing his pen.

“Why are you here?” Kayli suddenly asked. Finding out that she had extended family did not phase her, but she could not figure out what their purpose was. The only clue was something about a fire Dean mentioned during his rant.

Dean lifted his head from the back of the couch to look around at everyone in the room before concentrating on his newly discovered second cousin. His right hand lifted from his lap and swung around in lazy circles to illustrate and punctuate his words. “We heard about the fires in the area and we thought, hey. We’re not busy right now. Might as well see what’s going on and act on my childhood fantasy of becoming a firefighter.”

“Hold on,” Corey quickly interrupted. “Do we need to be discussing this…” he trailed off with his eyes glancing back and forth between Kayli and Axel in an attempt to silently communicate with the Team Boss the rest of the sentence.

Axel scratched at his five o’clock shadow, obviously understanding Corey’s concerns and formulating an answer. “It’s alright. She can get involved if she so wishes.” Axel’s dark eyes focused into Kayli’s to address her directly. “Do you?”

So, it was official Academy business that this was about. Kayli knew that while a couple of the guys took her out to help build houses during the day, others of the team were out doing whatever the Academy made them do, and she had no grounds to stick her nose into it. But whatever it was dealt directly with what these newfound family members were interested in: the fires she had been seeing in news reports over the past few weeks. She wanted to get to know more about the Academy, so she was going to grab up any opportunity she could to figure out how they operated and why there had to be so many secrets surrounding them. Now that she had new strangers looking into her and her brother without her permission, she was definitely going to hop on this train. She could have kissed Axel for handing her the chance to do it openly, which made her job easier as opposed to trying to sneak around behind everyone’s backs to find any information that could be of use to her.

“Might as well,” she said with a smile. “It’ll give me time to get to know my new cousins.” She couldn’t reveal her true intentions, but what she did admit was the truth, enough of the truth to keep Marc’s stunning lie-detecting skills from pinging her out.

“What can you bring to the table?” Brandon obviously still held doubts, blood relations and Marc’s seal of approval of their honest intentions aside.

“Well, uh…” Sam hesitated before glancing at his brother. “We just got into town so, not much.”

Dean made an addendum. “Yet.”

Brandon was about to say something, but immediately stopped and closed his mouth when Axel made a hand gesture to wait. “We could use the extra perception and hands on this case. There’s no more room for pride here.”

Raven grumbled. “I still don’t trust them,” he said, obviously not caring that Sam and Dean clearly overheard him.

Axel eyed down the tattooed Russian. “We work on nothing but these fires. Time is running out.” The olive skinned boss heard Raven’s concerns and knew he didn’t have much grounds to trust them either. If they kept the focus on nothing but the mission, then there shouldn’t be an opportunity for these new strangers to stick their noses into any Academy secrets. The priority was on the case; people’s lives could be at stake.

Dean sat up straight on the couch with a warm smile upon his lips and his hands rubbing together as if he was about to get to work. “Alright. Let’s put our heads together.”

Marc stepped forward to bring attention to him as he took the floor. He would be the one to brief everyone of the situation, but first he needed to know where to start. “How much do you guys already know?” he asked.

Sam managed to explain in a nutshell the extent of their knowledge, which was pretty much limited to the fact that the original church fires are obviously not the same MO as the current string of fires. That fact that the new fires he read up on all started at the same time of night came up.

Marc nodded, noting this was all information the team had already gathered. “The timeline seems to be the only link among all these new fires. Every three days since the arrest of the original arsonist at the same time each night. Other than that, there’s no discernable pattern to anything. I’m starting to think it’s a cult we’re looking for. If it was one person, there’d be more in common. A group of people can each do a fire in their own individual way, but with some sort of common goal. The time has to be some kind of message.”

“I looked into the timestamp,” Brandon said. “I can’t find anything significant to 8:49 pm. The closest event was an official time of death for a fast food restaurant manager six years ago. He died from a major heart attack at 8:48, and his history was clean. There’s no motive for any political messages there.”

“All our leads are turning up as dead ends,” Marc explained. “Our best course of action is to keep conducting interviews through the day tomorrow before we prepare for a wild goose chase.”

“Wild goose chase?” Dean inquired.

Marc continued. “Yeah. We’re expecting another fire tomorrow night if what little pattern there is holds up. We just have no idea where it’ll happen since the locations seem completely randomized.”

Kayli looked up at Corey and noticed the strain in his features. Since she slept in his room most nights, she was able to observe the numbers and equations that were scribbled and erased on the chalkboard painted walls. The latest sets had been particularly frustrating based on the numerous and hastily rubbed out smears done with the side of a fist. Now that she was being oriented with this new assignment, she could tell the lack of a pattern annoyed him. He could not properly analyze the quantified data, and thus was not able to profile or predict what was going to happen next. She made a silent promise to him to take the time to play some videogames with the nerdling as soon as they could. That always seemed to help him unwind and get him to emerge from his shell of numbers, formulas, and programming codes, even if she was a horrible gamer. They both still had fun.

“What about the security camera footage from the fire station?” Sam asked.

“Corey?” Marc directed the question.

Corey squeezed Kayli’s hand tangled with his. “I can work on that tomorrow. I have a commitment tonight to take care of first.”

“We’ll split up into smaller teams tomorrow morning,” Axel instructed. “The daytime will be devoted to interviewing witnesses, and then we’ll regroup at dinner time. By then, we will have a more solid plan to find this new fire and minimize the damage, hopefully catching the culprit red handed.”

“Give me a few minutes, and I can compile our findings so far for you two,” Marc said as Corey pulled his phone out of his pocket and answered it. “You can take the night to review it and give us your insights and opinions.”

Corey headed out the front door of the apartment with the phone to his ear. “Yeah.  Hey, Renji,” he said before the door shut behind him. Brandon made his way to the kitchen counter and grabbed a couple corndogs and a container of tater tots, nodding his goodnights to everyone else before following his twin brother out the door. Both Kayli and Dean recognized the action of an older sibling going out of their way to make sure their younger brother was fed, having held the same concern for their own siblings during their lives. Their hearts lurched at witnessing it from an outside point of view.

With the corndog she had completely eaten, Kayli stuck the bare bamboo stick into the pocket of her jeans before scooping up the napkin Sam had written on. Examining the names more closely, she noticed that the bottom tier of the family tree had four names: Dean/Sam, then Kayli/Wilson. Just like the Academy did, these guys researched her and her brother behind her back without bothering to ask. Was there no such thing as privacy anymore?

Dean hopped up from the couch and excused himself for the restroom. Raven escorted him down the hall to show him the facilities and probably to make sure the tall, green eyed man didn’t go snooping into any rooms he didn’t have permission to enter.

“Kayli,” Sam called to her, bringing her attention to his hazel eyes framed by his long locks of mahogany hair. “Where’s Wil?”

That was the million dollar question she wanted the answer to herself. Kayli still had not heard a whisper from her lanky younger brother since she was picked up by the Academy for her pickpocketing skills weeks ago. She didn’t trust these so-called cousins nearly enough to admit that to him yet, if ever. The lie came easily out of her, probably too easily. “He went to Disney World with Kevin for the week.” That bought her several days to try and figure out Sam and Dean’s intentions toward them and to concoct another excuse as to why they can’t see him.

It appeared Sam believed her. That made things easier.

Marc came back and handed Sam a file folder thick with print outs. Kayli decided this was the best time to go ahead and excuse herself for the night and gravitate back to Brandon and Corey’s apartment to wash off all the sweat and grime from the construction work earlier in the day and to call it a night. She bid everyone pleasant dreams before heading out the front door. No one noticed she shoved the napkin with names on it into her pocket.

The moment the door closed, Sam stood and Dean walked up. “Dude. She’s hot,” Dean leaned over to mutter quietly to his brother.

Sam scoffed. “She’s our cousin, Dean. And she’s only nineteen.”

Raven’s eyebrows knit together as he stroked the stubble growing on his chin. “Is it an American thing to lust over family like that?” he asked to no one in particular.

Marc looked up from where he was tidying up the paper products left over from their deep fried dinner in the kitchen. “Almost. It’s a West Virginia thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Academy series doesn't actually say what Will’s full first name is, so we're working off assumptions here. Someone remind me to change it if the canon does reveal it and our assumption is wrong. 
> 
> The phone call from Renji is a small cameo to Jordiscy's Academy fic, Paper Crane. It can be found on Wattpad.

**Author's Note:**

> I know The Academy doesn't have a fandom on AO3, but the books are definitely worth a read. 
> 
> Jordiscy is also posting this on wattpad, but we are collaborating and co-writing. I'm doing the easy part- visualizing parts and spitting out nonsense, and she's doing the hard part- making it coherent for you guys and making it nice and pretty with details.


End file.
